Little Scoops of Kindness
by rufeepeach
Summary: Mr Gold comes to meet with Mary Margaret in her jail cell, and Isobel French stops by to help out. AU where Belle is a Storybrooke character, and has never been in the asylum. Rumbelle, some MM/David.


_Two fills in one for this: the Tumblr Rumbelle Wars Special Attacks prompt 'Mary Margaret's take on the Rumbelle relationship', and for rose-papillon on Tumblr, who prompted 'Mr Gold's love of ice cream'. _

_I don't know if this is fluffy or angsty. It depends on which way you turn it and look inside.  
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><p>Mary Margaret had always studiously avoided Mr Gold's shop.<p>

There was something about the place that seemed a little… off. It was dark, and almost ancient, too malevolent for their quiet, sleepy little town. Not to mention the rumours one heard about the owner.

They said he would kick anyone out of their home if they missed a month's rent. They said he glared at nuns in the street, and stole lollypops from schoolchildren.

As a teacher, she knew that last one was a lie.

She looked at the man outside her jail cell, leafing through her arrest file and picking out important documents. He didn't steal candy from children, but he sure as hell looked like the kind of evil gremlin who would.

_Evil gremlin?_ She shook her head at her own ridiculous thoughts: she'd started thinking like Henry.

"Okay, Miss Blanchard, I think we're good to go." He looked up, smiled at her, and a tingle of fear ran down her spine.

This man was a dragon in human form, all pointed teeth and sharp eyes.

But he was also the only lawyer in town, and he believed her.

"Now, I assume that pleading guilty is out of the question?"

"I'm innocent." She said, and the words fell from her mouth flat and cold. She'd said them too often, to too many people who should have known better, to care about tone anymore.

"That much is obvious, but I had to ask. I-"

"Hello?" a small voice that Mary Margaret thought she recognised came from the doorway, and Mr Gold turned his head.

She knew the look on his face, because she'd seen it before. He was looking at Isobel French, the florists' daughter, the way David used to look at her.

The way he _still_ looked at her, horrible, stupid, unfaithful, untrusting, unbelievable _bastard_ that he was.

"Ah- hi." Gold's expression – lost, longing, loving and heartbroken all at once, such a strange combination on a face that was always so calm, so intimidating – was gone as quickly as it came, and he was smiling his usual courteous smile, "Come in."

Isobel beamed and came inside, hands full of shopping. She set the bags down on the sofa outside Mary Margaret's cell, and reached inside one of them, pulling out three small, sealed cartons.

"I brought ice cream, I thought you might be getting peckish." She smiled at Mary Margaret and passed her one of the cartons through the bars, "I got chocolate and vanilla, I hope that's alright."

David had taken her to the ice cream parlour, once. One night when everyone else, including Kathryn, was at some kind of reception at Regina's and they'd had run of the town.

"Thank you." Mary Margaret smiled at Isobel, who grinned back, "That's so thoughtful." And it was: she didn't really know the woman, and she was in prison on suspicion of murder, and yet she brought ice cream.

"I'm always wary of getting people fruit flavours, people can be so picky, but chocolate's usually a decent bet."

"Chocolate's never a bad idea." Mary Margaret agreed, digging her little plastic spoon into the pot and taking a mouthful. The longing for freedom, to break out and run as fast as she could, to see the rest of the world and taste more than just this little scoop of kindness reared its head once more.

More and more Storybrooke itself was feeling as small, cramped, claustrophobic and wrong as this cell.

But Mr Gold was going to bust her out of it, he'd see to that.

Isobel smiled at her, and took a spoonful of her own tub, gesturing for Mr Gold to do the same. "He's getting all intense about your case," Isobel confided, "And ice cream helps him think. Plus it calms him down: he's no good with a foul temper."

"That'll be enough, Miss French." He chided, gently, but his eyes were smiling and his mouth seemed destined to follow suit. She shrugged at Mary Margaret, went to confer with Gold, leaving Mary Margaret to enjoy her ice cream in peace.

She watched the pair of them; stood between the desks, close enough to touch but far enough apart to avoid doing so. Talking a laughing like old friends, like partners in crime, although she almost radiated sunshine and he was like a dark raincloud, looming on the horizon.

She'd heard the rumours, of course she had. Mr Gold was Storybrooke's living, breathing, smiling nightmare: he exhorted money from everyone he could, and had the power to ruin whole families with a snap of his fingers. And yet here was Isobel, who worked in the Library and whom Henry idolised; a girl who was sweet and kind and brought ice cream and sunny smiles to suspected murderers, smacking his arm after a bad joke and stealing a bite of his rum and raisin.

She'd even done rounds with Mary Margaret at the hospital a few times, and Mary Margaret had never seen anything in her that wasn't honest and kind. And yet here she was, gazing at Mr Gold like he was the moon and the stars.

It didn't make sense, and yet Mary Margaret Blanchard, a woman the whole town believed to be a lying, murderous whore, understood all too well.

But no one knew how Moe French had got hurt – Mary Margaret had only found out because Emma had needed to tell someone – so she had to wonder if Isobel knew the truth.

She was beaming up at the man who, in his own words, had nearly beaten her father to death.

David was an asshole, no doubt about it, no matter how beautiful his smile or how kind his soul, or how hard Mary Margaret's broken, battered, shattered heart still beat for him. But he'd never done anything quite that awful.

That reputation was saved for her.

Isobel turned to smile at her, and looked a little ashamed, "I'm sorry, we're totally ignoring you, aren't we?" she came closer, sat on the edge of the desk, and Mr Gold followed like he was tethered to her.

Like she was the last lamp in existence, and all he could do was follow the light.

Mary Margaret smiled, and nodded, and brushed it off. Their conversation turned to the case, and Isobel's research into criminal practice, and Mr Gold's own ideas for defences.

The fingerprints on the box were hers because it had been hers since she was a child. Just because the heart was in it didn't mean she put it there.

The hunting knife didn't have her prints, which discredited the idea she'd used it to murder anyone.

She was known all around town to be a woman of good character. And even if now they all thought she was a tramp, and she was considering just wearing a red 'A' on her clothes and having done with it, the crime didn't fit the suspect. This was too deliberate, too macabre, to be a crime of passion.

And no one, not even Kathryn's closest friends, could believe her to be capable of something so evil, right out of the blue.

Isobel spoke excitedly, having spent days on the research, and her ideas – and her unshakable faith in Mary Margaret's innocence – gave her some hope.

She kept shooting glances at Mr Gold as the girl talked, and caught glimpses of that look again. There was a deep sadness in his eyes, even as his whole face lit up at her every look in his direction.

The town's monster was in love with the gentle, kindly librarian.

And she'd spent hours of her life researching his case, and brought him ice cream to his client's jail cell, and believed in a woman she had no incentive to trust based only on his word.

She _idolised_ him, trusted in him wholeheartedly. She was clearly besotted, and with a man who was twenty years her senior, and reviled by everyone she knew

Mary Margaret, knew love. She knew the signs, the long looks and stolen glances, the unshakable certainty that of course, _of course_, this had to work. Because who could deny the butterfly-filled stomachs, or racing hearts?

She had had an affair with a married man, she had been slapped in public by the woman she humiliated, and spat on in the street by old friends and neighbours. She had lost all ability, all _right_, to judge anyone's choice for a lover. She'd picked the wrong man to fall in love with, and this jail cell was her penance.

This town would tear them to shreds. They'd whisper words like 'cradle robber' and 'Stockholm syndrome'. They'd shun her for colluding with their common enemy. They'd fear him all the more for corrupting an innocent young girl.

But worse still, the pair of them would believe they could weather it.

Until Isobel discovered the truth about her father, or fell in love with someone younger, or the town got to one of them so much they couldn't take it anymore.

Then they'd feel what she felt: the knife that twisted in her gut whenever she thought about David.

She wasn't sure which of them she pitied more.


End file.
